residentgeek

Projects

BATTS (Barnhard Associates Trouble Ticketing
System) is a lean, elegant trouble ticket system with both command line and Web interfaces, written in Perl. It uses MySQL for its backend, and has a ticket-via-email interface for submission and informational logging. Features include support for tickets pending on or resolved when other tickets are disposed of, an ability to assign tickets to a person, an ability to categorize and prioritize tickets, and associating billing codes with various logging events.

Cuppa is a cute application for Mac OS X to time
your cup of tea as it steeps. Use it right from
the dock: just right-click or command-click on the
little teacup, and select the beverage you wish to
brew. You'll see a tea bag appear in the cup, and
gradually darken as the tea steeps. When the tea
is done, the teacup will bounce and make a sound.

Sen:Te Goban is a powerful, simple, fast Go board for Mac OS X. You
can use it to play the game of Go against a program, play with people
on Internet Go servers or your local network, or observe live
professional and amateur games on IGS. You can review and analyze
games, and also browse joseki or fuseki libraries.

> % I'm tempted to agree with you,
> mostly
> % on the point that some users
> deserve
> % Windows. Although coming from LWCE,
> I
> % was looking at EasyLinux--it has a
> GUI
> % kernel compiler! Anyway, I digress.
> I
> % just think that if you have no clue
> of
> % your computer's abilities or
> potential,
> % and don't really want to bother
> yourself
> % to find out, then yes. You belong
> in
> % Windows-using land, blissfully
> ignorant
> % of the alternatives.
>
>
> I don't agree with you; one of the
> reasons people turn to Linux is
> precisely because it is very stable and
> very dependable. I enjoy the bleeding
> edge as much as anybody, but _not_ on
> machines that are critical for my work.
> I don't want to set up an experiment,
> only to find out two days before
> deadline that critical drivers or other
> software don't work correctly on the new
> kernelm and I don't want _any_ surprises
> on the machine on which I'm writing my
> thesis.
>
> So, yes, do try out new kernels or new
> distros, but don't expect anybody to do
> it on critical systems.
>

If it's critical systems you're talking about, there's no guarantee that even the stable kernel or some driver subsystem thereof isn't buggy in some untested way. I'm of the opinion that unless you roll your own and know exactly what's going into it, there is margin for error. Some people consider that margin worth working around; a lot of times I'm one of them :)

No one ever said to try new features on critical systems--that's insane. But the fact that anyone can do it, albeit on a non-production machine, is why I say that some people deserve Windows. If there are alternatives, and you refuse to acknowledge them, then you earn the limitations you take upon yourself.